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Angel becomes FAMOUS (update on her post-surgery progress from the VET) >>
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Video: Angel the golden retriever survives cougar attack while saving boy
Somehow I missed this until tonight. My cynicism was no match; this is a phenomenal story.
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(PHOTOS BELOW)
Austin Forman, an 11-year-old who lives in the brutal climate, knows his chores are a necessity, not a task to do at leisure, so last Saturday afternoon, about 4 p.m., he himself noticed the fire was getting low. So he bundled up and went to fetch a couple of wheelbarrow loads from the backyard woodshed.
As he made his way back to the house in the mid-winter darkness, pushing his second load, he heard crunching on the snow. He stopped just long enough to see a huge shadow appear, and as the shadow charged, his Golden Retriever, who oddly on this day had never left his side instead of cavorting in the snow, also lunged, leaping over the covered lawnmower to collide in midair with a very large cougar, also known as a mountain lion.
There had been vague reports of a cougar in the area, but Angel, his lab, was suddenly in a fierce do-or-die fight with the intimidating cat. “I was terrified. My dog saved my life, but now the cougar had him,” he told a reporter from the Vancouver Sun on Monday as word of the true-to-life horror tale spread across Canada.
Austin ran in the house, screaming, and his mother quickly called her husband, who was nearby visiting at his father’s house, and then called 911 while the two animals fought ferociously outside. Understand, the cougar is about twice as large as Austin's dog. Constable Chad Gravelle of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police just happened to be at the station, not far away.
But before he could get there, the noise of the fighting eerily stopped. Austin’s sister, 17-year-old Holly, later recalled, “All we could hear was the heavy breathing of the cougar. He had Angel’s head in his mouth and was trying to suffocate her.”
That’s when the Royal Mountie roared up. “I got the call a cougar was mauling a child and that it was Austin,” the constable said. “He’s a good little guy and I was just hoping nothing was happening to him.“ As the officer rushed to the house, the daughter came out on the porch sobbing and said the cougar had the dog. My first thought was, ‘Thank Christ it doesn’t have the boy.’”
Constable Gravelle ran through the house and down the back stairs, where the big cat had dragged the still-battling Angel under the back porch. “The cat’s tail was sticking out and I could see the cougar had the dog by the neck.“ By now his service revolver was in the Mountie’s hand. “I wanted to hit the cougar and miss the dog. They were all tangled up together.”
So as Constable Graville lay in the snow, he fired a first shot that hit the cougar in the hind end, which caused the cat to only growl and clamp down harder on the dog. The second shot - equally true - hit the beast in the head, ending the death grip, but when Gravelle and Austin’s father, Jay, pulled the blonde lab out from under the porch, she didn’t move. Austin, watching horrified from the window, thought his dog was dead.
Said his father, “When we got the cougar off of her, she was barely breathing. But, all of a sudden, she took a great big breath.”
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Then the dog, just over a year old, dragged herself through the snow, rubbing her face as she tried to clear away the blood, and then she raised up. “All of a sudden her lungs filled with air, like a person awakening from a long sleep,” said the Mountie. “It was unreal!
As Austin’s father yelled, “She’s up!” the rest of the family poured out of the house. That’s when Angel went to every person, sniffing just so. “When she stopped at my son, she smelled him closely to make sure the cougar didn’t get him, and then she flopped down in the snow.”
Now it was Austin’s turn to pounce, “I thanked her and petted her and gave her a hug,” he would later say in a modest way. “After I found out she was alive, I was very joyful.” The remaining blood was tenderly washed away, the family doctored their pet as best they could, and a visit to the vet revealed nothing serious.
Other than some puncture wounds and tears, the dog is obviously as hardy as the people who live in Boston Bar this time of year; everything is going to be alright. “When we first got the dog, we called her angel because she loved to play in the snow, but now we call her our guardian angel,” said Austin’s dad.
So the next time you complain about the cold, be thankful our winter chill doesn’t come with a huge cougar in it, but also remember there are some four-legged Angels that walk among us, too. Above all, never forget this, “It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
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source: BC Local
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Angel is doing great post-surgery :)
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